


At Last

by scarlettandblue



Series: Qua Torva Res Es [4]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M, SGA Secret Santa 2009, Stargate Atlantis Vegas AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-14
Updated: 2017-04-14
Packaged: 2018-10-18 20:04:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10624170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarlettandblue/pseuds/scarlettandblue
Summary: The final part of this series





	

It was pure luck that Detective Sheppard was found. At least that was what the report he read about it said. And he had to read the report because his memories apparently ended six weeks earlier.

He had a hazy recollection of being sent to liaise with the military on some missing equipment, a burglary at a house, some kind of attack on the home owner, and then nothing until he woke up from the medically induced coma in the University Medical Centre five days after he had been found.

He owed his life to a Navajo Tribal Police Officer, in the area because he was visiting a friend who lived near Alamo. He had been driving along the 93 when an animal, maybe a dog or possibly a wolf, had run across the road in front of his car. He had braked sharply but he thought he might have caught the animal a glancing blow. He stopped to check on the creature.

In the report the officer explained that Wolf was his spirit animal and he did not believe it was a chance encounter. As he walked back along beside the highway the officer heard a sound and, thinking that the animal was injured, he stepped into the ditch that ran parallel to the road, and found a naked body. His first thought was the wolf had been scavenging the dead body.

When the faint sounds came again he realised the body wasn’t dead.

The medical report on John had initially been sketchy, the first doctor to see him in the trauma room stabilized him, noting he was severely dehydrated and had suffered a fractured arm and ankle plus a hairline skull fracture. There was also a punctured lung and internal bleeding. He was in surgery for several hours while his various injuries were drained and stitched, pinned and reset. At that point he was listed as John Doe because no ID had been found with him.

One of the nurses on duty had called the local highway patrol. She had suspected it was a hit and run and she hadn’t believed the Indian who had claimed to be a Tribal Police Officer in New Mexico. She figured he’d hit the guy, robbed him, and then had some kind of attack of conscience and brought his victim in for treatment. John was fingerprinted while he was lying on the gurney,  
waiting to be taken into the operating room.

By the time the Highway Patrol officer returned to his office he’d confirmed the Indian guy was for real, so although he put the prints into the system he didn’t follow it up. But John’s prints had been tagged by LVMPD when he’d gone missing, and detectives Ramirez and Brown were dispatched to the hospital. Then John Doe’s records were quickly altered to read Detective John Sheppard.

They never solved it though, what had happened to John.

At first the detectives were pretty gung-ho, running with the new evidence they had. Endlessly questioning the doctors about Sheppard’s injuries. About the conclusions to be drawn from the fact there seemed to be three distinct patterns of injuries. An initial head injury that had happened between six weeks and two months earlier, and the detectives were working on the assumption that it had happened when Sheppard first went missing. Then a second set of injuries, tibia fractured just below the knee and more comprehensively shattered at the ankle, fractured humerous and another hairline skull fracture -- that had happened possibly four or five days before Sheppard had been found. And, finally, the last injuries that had happened shortly before he was brought in. A punctured lung, internal tearing and bleeding, and a broken wrist on the same arm as the humerous fracture, all of them consistent with some kind of impact.

The doctors were adamant that these final injuries could not have happened much earlier, because if left untreated they would have proved fatal.

Of course Ramirez immediately impounded the tribal police officer’s truck and extensive samples were taken from the left front bumper, where there were clear traces of the impact he claimed had been with a wolf.

The tests proved that whatever it was the officer had hit, it wasn’t Sheppard. The hair samples were some kind of animal. The lab was pretty closed mouthed about the blood samples, however. Eventually they admitted there must have been some kind of contamination, because were unable to identify what the fluid was. They did confirm it did not seem to be human.

And after that the investigation hit a dead end, again.

Brown and Ramirez had already investigated Sheppard when he first went missing. Every sordid fact about his life. Every nasty little detail that might have led to him being killed and his body dumped somewhere in the desert was uncovered. They weren’t expecting much help from Nellis about the investigation that had taken Sheppard to Alamo in the first place, and the military proved to be every bit as uncooperative and misleading as they had suspected, so they had to go back further.

First they split the list of family and friends of everyone who had died in the incident in Afghanistan. But when they began to contact them, surprisingly no one seemed to hold the incident against Sheppard. It was a black mark on his military record, but as far as his fellow airmen and their families were concerned Shep should have been given a medal for what was effectively a suicide mission, flying an S&R into a war zone.

Brown discovered another angle about two days into the initial investigation when it one of Sheppard’s old buddies mentioned the real reason Shep had been canned. No one would confirm it officially. It wasn’t listed anywhere on his military records because he had never broken any of the actual rules. He had stuck rigidly to the non-fraternization regulations and had adhered strictly to don’t-ask-don’t-tell, so there had never been a question of a dishonorable discharge on those grounds .

Re-interviewing several of his former crew and fellow pilots confirmed it had been kind of an open secret, Shep was probably gay, he just never did anything about it. So while the brass couldn’t use it against him openly, it had probably tipped the scales in favor of a retirement rather than reassignment.

That led the investigation closer to home, his family and his ex-wife. But that was another dead end. The father had died about six months earlier, so he was in the clear, and Sheppard didn’t even know that because the brother didn’t have an up-to-date address for him. So the news that John was a detective with Metro was clearly a surprise.

The brother seemed like a pretty cold fish and had taken the news about John’s disappearance and the news about his alleged gayness in a controlled, passionless way. Ramirez might have taken it further because that kind of reaction was usually a red flag, but the brother was loaded and he had a rock solid alibi so they left it there.

The ex-wife was difficult to pigeon-hole too, she seemed to be genuinely concerned that John was missing and when Brown hit her with the news her ex was gay she had seemed relieved, and told him she was glad he’d finally had the courage to come out. She insisted they keep her up to date with their investigation into John’s disappearance.

This led to a heated discussion in the Captain’s office, because of course Sheppard had done no such thing. He hadn’t come out. As far as they knew he didn’t have relationships with anyone, guy lived like a hermit mostly. Ramirez figured Sheppard was as good as dead so it wasn’t going to matter to him that their investigation had outed him. Brown was uneasy about it. He figured they were trashing a fellow detective’s life and reputation.

The argument ended when Ramirez pointed out that finding out a guy was queer really shouldn’t be that big of a deal. He reminded Brown DADT didn‘t exist in the LVMPD. And he mentioned that the guys who worked with Shep were grown up enough to deal with having another gay colleague, and if they weren‘t then they were assholes, and Shep had probably figured that out about them already.

So, they rechecked Detective Sheppard’s life. And it turned out Sheppard did have one well-hidden, dangerous vice. He gambled more than he could afford to lose. So there were several people he owed money to.

The annoying part was that all the usual suspects, as far as private poker parties and other less than legitimate gambling establishments went, had rock solid alibis too. And the detectives still had nothing

When Sheppard was found alive against all the odds, they had to wait until he was conscious and able to answer their questions, and Brown and Ramirez assumed once they could interview him the case would be cleared.

But that didn‘t happen. Sheppard wasn’t dead. But he didn’t remember a goddamned thing, so the investigation was going nowhere.

It took Sheppard a long time to recover. His doctors said it was natural after such serious injuries, and that his progress wasn’t slow at all, it was remarkably swift given all that had happened to him, but it didn’t feel right to him.

He’d been injured before: broken bones and several concussions, he‘d been shot twice and survived two crashes. But maybe he was getting older, maybe his bones were more brittle. Whatever the reason, he struggled to get back a level of fitness to return to work.

The only good thing about any of it was that Nancy got in touch, and he remembered all the reasons why he still loved his ex wife, even though he wasn’t in love with her. And it was Nancy who told him about his father, and what had been left to him in the Will.

John had felt a brief moment of vertigo when she explained his father’s Will. The likelihood that his father would provide for him that way had been so terribly remote, that hearing it John had felt a deep sad regret they never had the chance to speak one last time, because maybe, after all, there had been a way to patch things up between them.

But when Nancy explained the rest, the bitter understanding that even in death his father was making one more calculated act of severance, killed off the regret. Because it turned out his father had left him precisely nothing.

Money had been a trust fund set up under his mother’s Will, and left to his father to administer. The cabin, John remembered them visiting sometimes when his mother was still alive, had been in her family, and had passed to his father only for the duration of his life and then it was entailed to John.

And in one final act of contempt for his missing elder son, his father had left the trust fund tied up with a new executor. He must have thought leaving John in a position where he would have to go to his ex-wife and gain her approval for any withdrawal from the fund would be a fitting and uncomfortable punishment. He must have thought it would be even more hurtful than if he had left it for David to handle.

Sheppard had a tiny frisson of pleasure at the irony of that particular move, because it had so backfired. His father always had failed to understand John, so spectacularly that it was almost funny, because Nancy was the one person in the world he actually did trust with something like that.

And then John had a frightening second of insight into himself, that maybe his father was right to leave the money in trust. That maybe John would have been so angry when he got the news that he very well might have taken that money and done something monumentally stupid, or self-destructive. Like wagering it all on one hand of poker, or buying himself a helicopter and crashing it in the desert.

The way Nancy had smiled at him and squeezed his hand as she told him she had paid off all his debts, even the illegal ones no one was supposed to know about, made it clear she thought the same. Then, while John was reeling from that, she hit him with the other thing that Brown and Ramirez had done.

John wanted to shout at anyone who would listen that it wasn’t true. He wanted to punch Brown or Ramirez, or preferably both of them in the face, a lot. He wanted to hand his shield and his gun back to Captain Hendricks and go somewhere else. Somewhere that he’d never have to see another fucking person look at him like Nancy was just then, knowing that about him.

Maybe that was the real reason he found it hard to bounce back.

But in the end he realized most of the people he worked with already thought he was a weird loner with a crazy secret in his military past, and they were already expecting him to break bad one day. So, he figured anyone who was gonna hate him for being possibly gay probably already hated him anyway for being a freak, and in the end he was so bored, so totally desperate for something, anything, that meant he didn’t have to spend every day alone with himself, that he decided he could stand a few more assholes giving him grief.

So he just grit his teeth through the pain in his leg that hurt so much it had actually changed how he walked. He ignored how when the sun was too bright he got a headache, and he completely forgot that he hadn’t always worn a wristband on his right wrist to stop it from aching all the time.

He got himself re-qualified on his weapon and he convinced his doctor he was fit enough to work again. But he had to have a weekly session with the company shrink, and the captain wouldn’t let him work solo any more, no matter how much he complained.

He ended up having Connie Farmer as his partner. She was a tiny woman who had transferred on to the squad from vice. It wasn’t entirely clear to John who was being punished in their partnership. Him for being fucked up and in the closet or her for being a tiny woman who absolutely petrified every male detective on the squad, and had more unproven complaints for police brutality in her jacket than even the legendary Sergeant Malone, who was a dinosaur from the Jurassic era, when throwing a suspect down the stairs was considered a valid interrogation technique.

Inexplicably, it worked, too. Farmer was a good partner for John, she absolutely never fell for John’s bullshit or his charm, and she usually ignored him if he came to work looking a little more used up and spit out than normal. Instead, she took him completely seriously and somehow that made him act serious when he was at work, and that seemed to make it easier for him to settle back into the job with everyone else.

Strangest of all, John found himself in the position of being the voice of reason in their partnership, while Connie always wanted to haul off and kick some ass.

Connie was the one who noticed the report the day he came in looking extra beat up after his encounter with Marcin Pedrowski’s enforcer. Nancy had paid what he owed the guy, but from time to time Marcin liked to remind John he still wasn’t off the hook for bringing cops down on his private poker club. He considered it was John’s fault, even though he had been kidnapped or whatever, and had nothing to do with the visit Ramirez and Brown had paid to Pedrowski’s place.

“Seen this, John?” She fluttered something in his face untill he grabbed it in self defense.

“No, what is it?”

“A concerned citizen reported an incident in a parking garage. Guy got beat up pretty bad, then drove off in an old Chevrolet.”

John looked at the report a little closer -- the report didn’t have any specific details like license tags so he wasn’t that worried. “Oh yeah?” He aimed for laidback and unconcerned.

“Looks like an opportunity to catch some bad guys, if you ask me.” Farmer smirked at him, like it was obvious to her what was going on. She raised an eyebrow and stared pointedly at the place high on his cheekbone where he could feel the heat and swelling from the punch he had taken in the face.

John shrugged and tried to hand the paper back. “Not interested.”

“Well, maybe this will make it more interesting.” Farmer handed him a second report. As John read through it he felt something tighten in his chest. It must be a coincidence. Just a weird set of circumstances, but it still made him pause for a second because it was the same name he‘d seen in the file about his disappearance. Dr Meredith Rodney McKay. It was just a name typed on a report, though, he didn’t remember it.

“And there’s another thing, Shep. Within half an hour of McKay’s name coming up, I got a call from Captain Hendricks. He wanted to know why he had a Major Davis shouting at him down the phone because we were investigating someone of special interest to the military.”

John didn’t know what to make of it. “But we’re not investigating McKay, right?”

“No, but I guess they ran his details when he called in the incident, and his name is registered as a person of interest in connection with your disappearance. So they sent a couple of officers to check him out. One of the cops was an old poker buddy of yours. He recognised your license tag right off. He didn’t put it in the report because he figured you didn’t need any more heat, so he brought it to me this morning.” She handed him a further page, looked like it was torn from a notebook. He couldn’t help his smirk when he saw the numbers had been written in pink glitter ink.

“Apparently has a little girl staying with him, his niece. Smart kid too, she wrote the license tags down.”

“Okay.”

“If you wanted some time, to check the guy out, I can cut you some slack. We’re only finishing up paperwork on the latest bodega hold-ups. And we both know we’re going nowhere with the shooting in Summerlin, playing a waiting game until the wife is willing to tell us why she did it. So, unless a new case comes in there’s plenty of down time.”

“Well yeah, but…”

“See if it was me, Shep I’d beat down the guy’s door, shove him up against the wall and give him a real hard time until he spilled.”

John couldn’t help the blush that flamed across his cheek. He dropped his eyes uncomfortably, because Jesus Christ sometimes Farmer talked like this stuff got her off.

“But I know you like to take your time, John. You like to check things out, maybe just watch for a while. Then you kind of amble in and flirt it up a little, and when they don’t expect it you slide in behind their defenses.”

“Farmer!”

“What?”

John was completely tongue-tied, because she normally didn’t mess with him this way. Then again maybe it was him, because then she said, “I’m just saying I know you have to do this. It can’t be a coincidence that you run across McKay again. So you have to find out what he knows. Because he might have the answer to what happened to you, and why. And while my way gets results, and if you want we can go in guns blazing and slap the guy around until he talks, I’m just saying you have a way with people. You get suspects to talk, and maybe your way is gonna work better on McKay. So if you need the time I’ll make sure you have it.”

“Oh, right… Yeah, that’s… what you… Right.”

“What did you think I meant?”

And now she was yanking his chain, so he just pouted a little, because he knew it annoyed her, and turned and walked out of the office without another word. He could hear her cackling behind him and he figured out what it was that terrified all the guys about Farmer, she was a fucking witch.

 

But she was right. He had to know what McKay knew. He had to find out if it was coincidence their paths crossed, or if it was something else. So he spent the rest of the week watching the guy from a distance.

He figured out McKay wasn’t any kind of covert operative because he was totally oblivious. He was so oblivious that John got a little careless, maybe, and to his shame the kid spotted him.

He’d been off kilter anyway, he wasn’t sleeping so well, and when he saw they were headed to a diner he sometimes used he felt uneasy, like McKay had somehow slipped into the fabric of his life. Then, when he sat at his usual table and the waiter, Rob, started to flirt with him, like he always did, it made John feel sad.

Rob was young and good looking and brave enough to be himself in a way John was probably never going to be. And sometimes it got to him that the closest he‘d felt to anyone in a long time was a suspect he was following for his job. So he forgot what he was doing and when the kid looked right at him he smiled back at her.

He had tried to sink back into being unnoticed, he tried to keep his eyes away from the table where McKay sat. He tried not to stare at the freckle he’d noticed just above the neck of his t-shirt.

He must not have done a good job though, because as they left, the little girl leaned across and whispered in his ear. “Don’t be sad, you can be friends with Uncle Mer, after I go home tomorrow.”

 

John just sat there, he couldn’t even bring himself to follow them any more. He wondered how obvious a guy had to be for a six year old to spot it. He spent the day back at his desk, kind of ashamed that he was almost hoping some poor bastard would get themselves killed to give him something to do. But all the crazys must have left town because it was pretty quiet.

He went home and he was dog tired, but he knew he wouldn’t sleep. For the past week he had been disturbed by his dreams. John had spells when he had bad dreams. He’d seen too many things and he’d done too many things to not to be troubled by nightmares, but this wasn’t the same at all. Maybe there were things buried deep in his memory that were resurfacing. Things about what happened to him while he was missing. Things that McKay would be able to tell him. Things he might be afraid to know now he finally had the chance to find out.

So he sort of expected to have disturbing dreams full of fear and darkness and unbearable agony. What he didn’t expect was blinding joy and wild electric energy blazing through his body like cold fire.

What he didn’t understand were dreams of running just for the sheer exuberant delight of moving fast and low over the ground. Racing until his heart felt like it might explode just because it was everything to him to be running side by side with his companion, his brother, his lover. What he didn’t comprehend was the moment just before waking, when he knew everything, when he held the meaning in his mind, pure and sure and bright, only to feel it slip away as he came awake and realized he was alone.

 

John watched from his car as McKay’s visitors packed the trunk and got ready to leave. He got out of his car as they were saying their goodbyes, he wanted to catch the man before he went back inside. As Sheppard leaned back against his car to wait, the little girl spotted him over her uncle’s shoulder where he was leaning in through the window to give her a final hug. When she waved at him and smiled, he responded before he even thought about it. Then, suddenly, the car was driving off and McKay was turning towards him.

John couldn’t honestly remember the first few minutes of conversation with Dr McKay. He stumbled through it in a confused muddle because of his eyes. John couldn’t stop looking at his eyes, so blue and familiar it almost hurt to look, but it hurt worse to look away. And it felt like he was falling into this other person, like this was all so familiar and it was like McKay already knew everything about him. Then the guy said something and John was pulling back because suddenly he remembered he needed to be cautious, maybe he needed to protect himself, because McKay did seem to know him in a way that made John uncomfortable.

But that wasn’t right either because McKay was turning away from him and John could not bear that. So he grabbed McKay by the wrist.

After that John could not look away and he couldn’t hide what he felt any longer.

McKay seemed to falter, he blushed and he stared at John’s hand on his arm so intensely that the look burned. Then, as McKay looked at him again, almost shyly, he seemed to soften and when he spoke again it was gently, and as he spoke he reached up with a finger and touched John’s face just briefly, so tenderly it might have been a lover‘s touch. And John knew that touch, like it was already familiar, as if McKay had already touched him like that a thousand times.

It made him happy and sad at once to think this was only the first time, so he tried to hide behind his usual smile and his usual façade, the place where nothing ever really touched John Sheppard. And McKay must have seen right though him because was saying, “Do you like coffee?"

Then somehow McKay was holding on to him and pulling him in to his house.

As the door shut John had a weird sense of déjà vu. He imagined pushing McKay against a pale wall and kissing him hungry and messy, pressed against his body until he gasped and came in his pants, just from the pressure and heat and the friction between them.

McKay still wasn’t letting him go as he pulled him through the house to the kitchen and the promised cup of coffee.

Sheppard wanted to stand in McKay’s kitchen and drink his pretty fantastic coffee. He wanted to push him against the counter and make out with him until their lips were red and sore from too much kissing. He wanted to shake the man and make him tell everything he knows, and he so wanted McKay to touch him again with gentle fingers that he almost can’t catch his breath. He wanted it to be over and he wants it to never end and he feels like his life is spooling out around him and he can’t catch enough of it up in his hands and stuff it back inside himself to carry on.

“When did we meet, John?”

McKay’s voice is quiet as he poured two cups of coffee and set them on the island that divided the kitchen from the dining area.

“Just now?” John answered, wondering if it was a trick question.

“My sister says I had dreams about someone called John. It feels like it’s you, but it can’t be, can it?”

John shrugs then shakes his head because he honestly doesn’t know the answer to that.

“I don’t remember you, all I remember is moonlight and running and being wild and free.”

John is staring at McKay because that could be his dream too, and he finds himself saying. “I dream about that.”

Then they’re both staring at each other as John said, “Meredith.“

And McKay said, “Rodney.”

Which had John confused until he added, “One of the many and varied reasons I will always hate my parents is they named me Meredith. I use Rodney, my middle name.”

So John smiled. He knows the smile is maybe ten percent obnoxious because he just can’t help it, but it was mainly full of hunger as he said, “Rodney.”

And it’s like a final barrier between them let go. Want and desire and need flush through John and he sees the same warmth and hunger reflected back from McKay. He steps forward and he’s flush against the other man and the heat from his skin is incendiary.

John rakes his hands up Rodney’s chest, pushing his t-shirt up. The feel of soft skin and the hard nipples that he circles his palms across before his hands move up higher, fingers tangling in McKay’s surprising thatch of chest hair. It makes him whimper deep in his throat. John lets the edges of his thumbnails continue to tease Rodney’s nipples, and his mouth waters to bite them.

John‘s hands slide round to hold Rodney, still teasing with his thumbs, but his hands push down bending McKay back further against the kitchen island as he finally takes Rodney’s mouth in a deep kiss.

John had never considered himself much of a kisser. If he’s honest he never really got it. Kissing. He always felt his mouth was too hard, too flat, too awkward, but maybe it’s just that he never kissed Rodney before.

Now he can feel the kiss on his lips and on his tongue. When Rodney’s tongue slides along the inside of John’s lower lip and when he sucks the whole of John’s top lip into his hot wet mouth it’s like a thousand tiny pin pricks of pleasure shiver down his body and come to rest deep and low in his belly, tightening his balls until they ache just right and his cock twitches and gets even harder. It’s a fucking revelation.

And it’s not like Rodney lies back and takes it. He is moving all the while. His hands undo the buttons on John’s shirt until it hangs open. Then Rodney slides his hands round John’s back and pulls him close, spreading his own legs a little so John’s body is hard against his, right were he needs the pressure most.

Then Rodney slides his hands down John’s back and inside his jeans and boxers, and John thinks that he could come just from the feel of McKay’s hot capable hands on his bare ass, and the way McKay’s tongue fills his mouth makes him breathless and hot and desperate for more.

And suddenly, there is more. As John tried to pull his mouth away to gasp in a few breaths, Rodney sucked on his tongue hard, tightening his lips and pulling on it until something liquefies inside John. And he’s still trying to gasp something, maybe moan in protest because he knows he’s about to come, when Rodney’s pushy hands shift inside John’s pants.

One hand is wrapped around the fleshy part of John’s ass and his upper thigh, and it pulls him open just enough that Rodney can slide his other hand down the crack. There’s definitely not a good angle for Rodney to push fingers inside John, and Oh God John so wants Rodney’s fingers to push rudely inside him.

He’s wondering vaguely if he can shift a little more so that can happen, even as his body felt flushed and pliant, reacting to the way Rodney just shoved his legs apart. Then John feels the unbelievable pleasure of something hard pressing against his hole. Rodney is using the big knuckle of his thumb to press into John. And it’s enough to make John grind harder against Rodney once, twice and then he’s coming.

John lies there for a few moments, boneless with pleasure as the sticky warmth of his come inside his pants feels kind good in a dirty sort of way. He feels Rodney begin to shift and he wants to clamp round him and keep him there a little longer but he’s aware of being watched. Rodney is lying back against the work surface, but his eyes are wide open and he is studying John.

John swallows, the lovely weighty afterglow feeling gradually receding and he waits, wondering what was going to happen now. Because he’s never done anything like this before.

He’s well aware that people see how he looks and assume all kinds of things that are simply not true at all. He’s well aware that since Ramirez and Brown kind of outed him, for the sake to trying to save his life or solve his murder, or whatever, most everyone in the squad has probably been assuming even more things. That the kind of things fuelled by nothing more than a vague notion of just how gay John Sheppard really is, and the one episode of Queer as Folk that they might have accidentally watched half way through before they realized exactly what was going on, are probably beyond what his limited sexual experiences can conjure up.

The truth is the wildest times John has probably ever had were likely all by himself, and even then he’d had to be careful. He never used more than his hands, just a finger, very rarely two, because military medical examinations can be incredibly through and John was always horrified that a doctor might see, might be able to guess what he‘d been doing, what it meant. Plus, as an officer John might have the privilege of privacy, but the privacy of your own tent isn’t really all that private.

So yeah, this is pretty much the wildest thing he’s ever done. And he has the feeling Rodney knows, the way he’s so intent, looking at John like he can read all this thoughts just from the expressions on his face. Like he already knows everything.

“I think we should take this to the bedroom.”

When Rodney finally says that, it takes a moment for it to sink in, then John asks, “Yeah?”

Rodney pushes up on his elbows and John slides down him a little before he makes an effort to stand up on his own feet, and wow, that is the most disgusting feeling ever, right there in his pants now it’s all cold and sticky and in contact with his lower belly.

“Oh definitely.”

Rodney is smiling at him, a strange little smile, if John had to label it he might call it fond, but he doesn’t get why Rodney would be looking at him like that.

 

Later, after they chucked the cat off the bed and shut her out, John is too spread out, and open so wide and so achingly desperate from Rodney’s fingers inside him that he can’t wait, not even for a condom. He hisses urgently, “Come on, I’m clean, I haven’t had sex with anyone for three years, and I was tested last year after the whole…anyway .. just please fuck me. Just fuck me.”

So Rodney just pushes into him, bare and hot and hard muttering. “Yeah me too, I’m clean.. Oh yes… that’s right.. Take it all…”

And then John can’t even speak. There are sounds coming out of his mouth that he had no idea he could make. His face is pushed into the pillows and Rodney just keeps holding him there, fucking him and he wonders if Rodney will ever come. John comes. And he never knew, he had no idea how utterly mind-blowing it would be to come and come with a cock pushing in, not stopping, not letting up.

John is limp and pliant after that and Rodney shoves his legs a little wider and John knows Rodney is watching as his cock pushes inside. He feels the edges of Rodney’s thumbs touching him, almost delicately at the edges of his hole and if he had anything left inside him John knows that would have made him come again. His body shivers a little, all the response it can manage, and that must be enough because then Rodney is coming with a sigh and he says “John…” Very softly.

After, they lay, just slumped together while they try and recover a little. Eventually, John staggers to his feet to head for the bathroom and because he’s still relaxed, his body is still stretched from Rodney’s fingers and Rodney’s cock, he feels a slow nasty dribble as Rodney’s come slides down the back of his thigh. He can feel Rodney’s eyes on him, all of him lazy and spread out on the bed, but his eyes are quick and sharp as he watches John’s expression. Rodney snorts and there’s that fond smile again.

Later still, they wake up from sleeping and talk. By now the cat has ventured into the room and has squeezed between them, purring. Rodney strokes her as he tells John how he was missing and how he had been pretty mad, out of his head insane, when they eventually found him again. And John tells Rodney what he knows, and what little he remembers of what happened to him.

“So it happened to us both.” That‘s all Rodney says.

“But what happened?” John can‘t believe Rodney doesn’t have more questions or even answers, he’s a scientist after all.

“I honestly don’t know, I mean I think I should know but I don’t.”  
Rodney looks pained for a moment. “I think I lost my mind. Literally I think something is missing in here.” He taps the side of his head. “And now I’ve met you, I think maybe its what they call ‘folie a deux’”

John stares at him a moment then shakes his head. “That sounds like crap. A plot for a bad Sci-Fi movie. Aren’t you supposed to be a real scientist?”

Rodney shakes his head. “Not any more. They retired me.”  
He thinks for a moment idly playing with the cat’s fur. “It feels like I should care more about that, but I don’t -- maybe that‘s the part of my mind that‘s gone.”

“Well I care, whatever happened fucked me up. I was injured. Maybe you went mad, but that means you might have been the one who…” And John stops realising what he was about to say.

“I didn’t hurt you John. I couldn’t.”

But Rodney looks stricken like he thinks maybe he did, and John trusts his gut feeling on this and says, “No I know you didn’t hurt me, I know it wasn’t you.”

Rodney puts the cat aside and pulls John to him. They lay again pressed together, and now Rodney is petting John like he was petting the cat earlier and John finds he doesn’t mind that at all. They talk about everything in quiet hesitant voices because this is something foreign to them both, but they have to tell how it’s never been like this with anyone before, for either of them. John feels something that has been forever screwed down hard and tight inside himself break free.

John finds it hard to believe he can come a third time, he’s too old for that. But somehow they are making love again. And it’s slow and so gentle. Light touches and lips and teasing and tongues and John shivers, pushing in and in and in and just melting into a climax deep inside Rodney.

It’s dark when John wakes up again. The cat is shoving its way under his hand demanding some attention, and Rodney isn’t there.

John feels a moment of dread. Wonders if none of it was real, then he remembers, he doesn’t have a cat. So no, it’s real.

He hears a sound. He gets up when he recognizes the clandestine clanking and rummaging of a hungry person raiding the fridge in the middle of the night. John is surprised when his own stomach rumbles and he notices he’s starving hungry.

They eat standing naked at the island work surface. Wolfing down cold cuts that had been destined for sandwiches, and cold left-over lasagne and moo shoo pork; for desert there’s Rodney’s favorite type of chocolate cake.

John says that his favorite is carrot cake and Rodney pauses for a moment and then mentions he nearly died after eating some carrot cake that had lemon juice mixed with the cream cheese frosting, because he is deathly allergic to citrus. Except no one had believed it was an accident because normally Rodney is ultra careful and his shrink got the stupid idea in his head that Rodney had tried to kill himself.

John stops eating, feeling a little sick because he knows that carrot cake is somehow his fault. He vaguely remembers tangy frosting. John heads for the sink to wash sticky chocolate filling off his hands, he can’t eat any more.

Rodney turns to watch him, and asks quietly. “Hey, what is it?”

“I think that was my fault.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, how could it be?”

John shakes his head and walks away from the kitchen. Rodney follows a few minutes later, and sees him standing by the open patio doors. The back of Rodney’s apartment looks out over its own little patch of garden, then it’s desert beyond his boundary. It is dark out there, but the moon must be full because it illuminates John’s skin bone pale, while his hair is inky dark. He looks like a creature from a dream, half unreal, and that makes the skin on Rodney’s arms shiver and the hairs rise up on the back of his neck.

As he steps closer to John he realizes there is an eerie phosphorescent glow that seems to come from something John is holding in his palm. The object seems to flare incredibly bright as Rodney reaches for it, and in that brief second the power peaks and it burns out the miniature circuitry in the device they had used to suppress his memory. Rodney understands again.

He sees that it is an Ancient device, a metallic disc, which seems to have embedded itself in John’s palm. He imagines John must be someone with a strong expression of the Ancient Gene, like Colonel O’Neill. Rodney can see words flaring brightly around the edge of the circle.

“What does it say, John?”

John turns his head and his eyes gleam a silvery reflection of the light given off by the device. There is a look of wild excitement on his face and he reaches for Rodney clasping his glowing hand tight to Rodney’s.

“It says transform“

***

An alarm blares in an underground lab at Area 51. Dr Lee groans, because he recognizes the signal -- the device that got lost when Dr McKay took it off base. He knows he is going to have to wake Colonel Simmons and tell him. He knows he’s going to have to admit that he disobeyed orders concerning the animal as well. And that it escaped.

He figures Simmons is going to get him fired, or maybe he’ll get lucky and it will be a transfer. But whatever, Lee thinks maybe it will be worth it, because there was no way he was ever going to destroy that wolf, it had been too beautiful an animal to put down. Plus it would have been wrong, because he’d known there was somehow a connection between the animal and the missing device, he just didn’t have a chance to explore all the possibilities.

***

A black wolf with huge eyes like mossy amber, and a mousy brown coyote with eyes the color of a stormy sea have holed up in a cave for the day. They sleep curled around each other. The wolf is a little smaller and more scrawny than a full grown wolf ought to be and the coyote is stockier than a regular coyote, but they seem pleased enough in each other’s company. As they snooze the day away waiting for night to fall.

 

***

Calico sat on the island work surface delicately finishing off some turkey. She had watched her human and his mate transform from a perch she had chosen for herself on top of the high bookcase in the living room. Cats knew many things, and this particular cat knew that they would transform back from their spirit creatures at sunrise the next morning.

She was interested to see how they had fared, because she was secretly quite fond of Dr McKay already. His previous cat had clearly trained him well. John seemed a little rough around the edges but Calico was certain she could have him well trained too, in no time. He seemed like a quick study.

The End.

**Author's Note:**

> This was the request silverraven11 made for her secret santa story:
> 
> Their request is: John/Rodney, please. If that’s not possible then:  
> OT4, John/Rodney/Ronon, or Rodney/Teyla. This year I would really like  
> an AU, something just a bit unusual. Werewolf!John or Werewolf!Rodney  
> (or both ;-)) would be love. First-time or established relationship.  
> Sex would be nice. Fun and funny, plotty romance, or dark and angsty,  
> it’s all good. Write what genre you like, just happy endings only  
> please.
> 
> They would not like: Death!fic, genderswap, partner betrayal, any  
> pairing not listed above.


End file.
